Welcome to the 28th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one :p ): starting in isolation....

For the 28th game in BTS the choosed leader was Brennus of the Celts:
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/LHC%20BTS%20XXVIII/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/LHC%20BTS%20XXVIII/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg
Well, people asked for Brennus, here it is :p

Seriously, I like Brennus. His trait combo is one of the best in game ( Cha/Spi ), a very flexible combination for war and for peace ( I already told how much i like Cha..... and Spi is very good too ). His starting techs are kind of bad, though........ His UU/UB combo are kind of controversial, with lots of people shunning both ( I have a diferent opinion, but who cares :p )... In here we probably won't see much of both, anyway.....

His UU
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/LHC%20BTS%20XXVIII/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg
Oh, the very controversial Gallic warrior..... a swordsman that starts with guerrilla I and that can be built with cooper or iron. As a personal opinion, i was not too keen on them until I played a recent always war game with Boudica, and they are a very solid unit, regardsless of going to the guerrilla line or not ( another promo line that some people shun for no particular reason besides not being CR ;) ). as you can do them with cooper, you can get them earlier than normal swords most of the times and the free promo means that they can handle themselfs if you stay in the hills ( and the enemy can chop forests, but they can't flatten hills :p ).

But in here, unfortunately, the bigger action they will see ( hopefully ) will be taking barb cities ......

His UB
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/LHC%20BTS%20XXVIII/Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg
Oh, the even more controversial Dun :p Dun is a wall that gives a free guerrilla I promo to the eligible units for it built in the cities with it. This means that only units that can have guerrilla I by default will have it from Dun, and that means archery and gunpowder units ( no, no melee :p This obviously excludes the Gallic warrior too ). A thing that is not told by the civilopedia is that the Dun counts more for the power rating than normal walls ( as most UU and UB, by the way )... not that counts much ( 3000 soldiers vs 2000 soldiers from a normal wall ).

In here... well, it will last longer than the UU ( until Rifling ), but I really can't see a good way of taking advantage of it :p

The start (for reasons that I'll explain below, the warrior may not be exactly in that spot in your game ):
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/LHC%20BTS%20XXVIII/Civ4ScreenShot0005.jpg
Nothing like a bucketload of food and not only a single tech to improve it since the beggining, again :p And to add, we are hemmed between sea north,south and west.... not the perfect scenario for a civ that starts without fishing :( Well, it surely asks for a GP farm in here.....

Regarding the saves: given some complaints about the efects of the AI starting without archery in high levels ( giving a unfair advantage to AI that have early UU and/or have early warmongering tendencies ), I decided to make 3 WB saves ( all in the same zip file ). The WB saves are equal except for the fact that one of them ( labeled Monarch ) has all of the AI with archery as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Monarch ), one ( labeled Immortal ) has all of the AI with archery,hunting and agriculture as starting tech ( corresponding to a game started in Immortal ) while the last is the corresponding to a game starting in Noble ( labeled Noble ). All WB saves are playable in all levels, but ( for a example ) if you use the Monarch one the AI will start with archery ( and archers ) in any level. This has only a slight effect in the human directly ( mainly via the garrisons of barb cities ), but has a huge effect on the AI gaming in the outer lands ( avoiding scenarios like Pacal, Shaka or Sitting Bull to take all the barb cities and becoming moguls ). I strongly recommend the usage of the Monarch save if you want to play in Monarch+ and the Immortal at Immortal/Deity.... All the speeds are working well ( no more games ending in 1900 ) The saves are zipped... you only have to unzip this to the worldbuilder saves or for the PublicMaps folder ( either one will do ) and load it from the scenarios.
Any problem PM me...

P.S WB saves are crosscompatible between 3.13 and 3.17 if they don't have No Espionage ticked. No problem with the patches here :p

Again a small request ( not mandatory :p ) :

We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to :p ) post reports at this moments of the game:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).


The last words are to wish good luck to all :goodjob: . And let the games begin!



P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy ;)

After some easy emperor LHC victories, I took the crazy decission to play Immortal this time. I have very few games played at this level, and even less victories, none of them with isolated start, so wish me luck with this one.:)

Swordsmen require iron to be built, not copper.

FYI :)

Not getting it, Geny .... you are technically right , but I wasn't talking of swordsmen. I was talking of gallic warriors, that can be built with cooper or iron ( check civilopedia ). This means that they can be built in the turn you get IW, if you already have a cooper mine connected.

Emp/Epic

IMO, this is a pretty tough map.

Played through 1870ish AD:



Settled in place suspecting metal 1N. It was - copper too.

Opening land was really obnoxious. We start on a little peninsula with BAD land on its path to our "mainland island". I went a heavy beeline for COL here - fishing, BW, pottery, priesthood, writing, COL. I wasn't that far from a philosophy slingshot actually :lol:, but lost oracle (wasn't trying very hard for it, took the $$$ and wasn't upset). Still founded confucianism pre-1k BC. This I needed, because city #3 was way the hell down there near that rice. Just not cool. Had 5 cities by 1 AD but tech sagged like hell with that distance maintenance. I did get TGL but that was the only early wonder I got (and other than oracle only I tried for).

I finished researching CS in the 800's AD - and lost liberalism in 860 AD! Whoa. When I met everyone I was painfully backwards, but at least we have all that sugar to trade for gpt and with tech broker whoring I caught up to just a little behind parity.

Interestingly, otherwise power-techer darius was still lacking steam power when I got to assembly line. Nobody really liked darius, either. I traded assembly line around for what I could, and went rush buying (even in this game, I CE whored) infantry/frigate/galleon. I took all of darius' coastal cities via bombard + land + capture next turn strategy, leaving CG II infantry behind vs rifles/cavalry (he never took a city back, did try a little). After I had all his coastal cities his last city was inland. I thought about making cannons or just suiciding infantry, but fortunately did neither. I rush bought 3 spies, and supported a very expensive revolt (1.8k, but hell, I already had 1.3k on darius so 1-2 turns of EP focus and it was done). Darius died.

So now I'm in a rough spot but not bad. I have a minor lead in land/pop over KK and his vassal Egypt (who idiotically has been defying every resolution, must have -10 anger or more), and am in a major tech hole to everyone. I just got industrialism, Hannibal has mech infantry and can research things like superconductor and laser. HC is going culture but other than aircraft can't make anything that I can't counter-produce.

The short-term idea is to rush-buy on HC and take at least one culture city (most likely cuzco, which sports the UN), hopefully forcing capitulation in the process. From there I'll probably tech to mech infantry and go for a naval strike + liberation strategy. If I can get enough capitulation I might win UN or even conquest but this map's been hard as hell. Hannibal might launch the ship too quickly but he hasn't made much yet so maybe I can do it all in time.

I lose. I would have won but the UN decided otherwise.

Just as a warning to all other players not using mods:

On emperor, it is possible for three different civs ranging from +5 to +6 net diplo toward an AI to vote that AI for diplo victory, despite indications of pleased not friendly or the fact that their displayed disposition to the human player is higher.

There are hidden modifiers, and the player, without mods, must know that these exist and are worth at LEAST +5. Just a heads up.

r_rolo,

What graphics settings/mod are you using? It looks gorgeous.

It looks better in game, pete :p

It is:

-BUG 3.0 (https://civ4bug.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/civ4bug/BUG%20Mod)
-Blue marble 3.0 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=6)
-CivScale (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7) with silver interface color @ 64
-anhu water file (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283638)

A much tougher island than Justinian had.

Checkpoint 1, 200 BC, turn 60. Quick speed, Noble difficulty. BW and IW have been researched in the screenshots.


I settle 1W, comes back to bite me. There isn't enough room to get another city to work the western clams and crabs, but Bibracte is working everything else.

My Scout got double-teamed by a panther and lion, but not before getting 108 gold and Agriculture from the huts. Not too bad.

I founded Hinduism in Bibracte on turn 11, but decide not to convert. I know I'll forget to go back to heathenism (is that a word?) before I meet other civs, and we don't want that dip penalty, do we?

I founded Vienne SW of the rice, a calendar beeline seems in order. It's really killing me not playing as a creative civ, after playing so much with Louis and Willem I forgot how much working for a border pop sucks.

I whipped out the ToA in Bibracte, that'll help when more cities get built.

State of my world:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/senor_k/Civ4ScreenShot0079.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/senor_k/Civ4ScreenShot0080.jpg

Anyone want to share their dotmap, and anyone have suggestions for the northern area with my capital location?

EDIT: I forgot to say that I have a settler sitting in Vienne, I'm ready for some REx.

I lose. I would have won but the UN decided otherwise.

Just as a warning to all other players not using mods:

On emperor, it is possible for three different civs ranging from +5 to +6 net diplo toward an AI to vote that AI for diplo victory, despite indications of pleased not friendly or the fact that their displayed disposition to the human player is higher.

There are hidden modifiers, and the player, without mods, must know that these exist and are worth at LEAST +5. Just a heads up.


This is a good thread to explain with base peaceweight visuals.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=244799

This is a good thread to explain with base peaceweight visuals.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=244799

So, basically it's a loss because the THREE AIs that voted for the last AI all had similar peaceweights. That'd be +4 for the guys who had +5 to the winner already, and +3 for the guy who was +6. I had a feeling this was the case almost instantly after it happened, but it was barely plausible.

The one who was +6 was "friendly" to that AI and I don't know many AIs that will vote a winner at +9 though. So, there must be an additional hidden modifier for difficulty not covered in that OP.

Basically though, I got SCREWED HARDCORE here. Peaceweight is not something fireaxis readily provided players, and this phantom diplo bonus was enough to get THREE different AIs who were otherwise not friendly enough to vote for victory to screw me. The kicker though? Two of those AIs had HIGHER DISPLAYED DISPOSITION towards ME :(. There should be no such thing as a "hidden modifier". That's BS. If I'd known this was coming without looking into the the game's files, I could *definitely* have prevented this outcome.

I'm going to memorize the "peaceweight bracketing" a little better though. Even if this game was total BS for me, it's better if I prevent recurrence.

Edit: Senor K - it barely matters on these isolation maps since rush targets are few and far between, but I'd rather you worded it "metal resource techs researched" or something, so that it doesn't give away what's actually there and what isn't. Of course, I've played the whole thing already, but not everyone has ;).

It looks better in game, pete :p

It is:

-BUG 3.0 (https://civ4bug.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/civ4bug/BUG%20Mod)
-Blue marble 3.0 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=6)
-CivScale (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7) with silver interface color @ 64
-anhu water file (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283638)

Thanks, it looks great!

Basically though, I got SCREWED HARDCORE here. Peaceweight is not something fireaxis readily provided players, and this phantom diplo bonus was enough to get THREE different AIs who were otherwise not friendly enough to vote for victory to screw me.

The real kicker is, Firaxis didn't even think anyone would be interested in a 'Glance Tab'...

^^"It's ugly" :(

The real kicker is, Firaxis didn't even think anyone would be interested in a 'Glance Tab'...

Glance would have certainly helped me to find the wrong data about whether or not I would lose to the UN more quickly :(.

Checkpoints 1 and 2 Emp/Normal



Usually I would expect to win every game at this level but not to sure about this one. ;)

I settled in place, nearly moved for the extra food, glad I didn't as room for an extra city with 3 seafood. For a long time those were the only 2 cities I had.

I founded 3 religions and built the AP so that is a possibility for a win (probably my best chance). I went for optics to meet the neighbours but they met me about the same time and Darius even has Astro!! So much for settling my island slowly. Rushing around trying to fill in the blanks now.

Now the really bad news with 3 financial civs on the same land mass they are so far in front of me it might be hard to catch up. Bulbing would be a possibility except I've had quite a few GPs already and they are settled in Bibracte.

I'll add the save if anyone wants to have a look but I forgot to take screenshots. Not sure what the save is like as I sort of gave up but am going to go back and win or lose complete this game. :D

Played on to 1665 and things are looking a lot better. I did manage to get a jewish missionary in at least one AI city for the AP vote. Unfortunately HC liked it so much he spread it around and now has double the votes I do so won't being winning that way. Unless some of his cities fall into my hands by accident. ;)

Tech situation. I managed to trade a couple of techs around and have now caught up/gone in front.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0065.jpg

Bibracte. Where all my beakers and hammers come from. I was going to put Oxford in there but its ended up with NE and IW.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0068.jpg

Now who should I attack as I have a very strong army at the moment. ;)

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0067.jpg

Well perhaps not. :p Luckily most of the AI are fighting each other. The only one not involved is HC so I'm relatively safe at the moment but need some military asap.

Win possibilities. I think I will try for a domination win. We have oil so I'm going to head for Industrialism after Radio and see if I can bring HC down a peg or 2.

Checkpoint 4



I had decided to go for a space victory but then something changed my mind.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0070.jpg

Oops I'm not going to win a space race before HC wins a cultural. Luckily he was pretty backward so my army of Tanks and MInf were able to take Cuzco. He brought in Shaka against me but after I had killed a few of his units he was willing to talk and.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0072.jpg

Don't think that quite worked out how HC planned. :lol: There was a couple of UN resolutions to stop the war which I had to defy so +10 unhappies in all my cities. So to counter that I bumped the slider up to 80%. Didn't realise till much later it was the Esp slider and not cultural. :blush:

I couldn't afford to let up on HC as Hannibal wasn't far behind in the cultural stakes. So eventually.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0074.jpg

The UN had voted for enviromentalism so I couldn't run State Property. Lucky for me this city had Versailles in it. :)

So after HC I healed my troops for a couple of turns then off to Carthage. No problems there and Hannibal duly capitulated. Next target Kublai. Another quick capitulation leaving Rameses and Darius.

They fell just as easily and.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh168/SJG12345/Civ4ScreenShot0076.jpg

Conquest Victory. :D

Thanks again for hosting this R Rolo. :goodjob:

I'll give this ago, I just couldn't get into the Justinian game, I kept on crashing my economy, or REDUCING my tech rate....admittedly I only tried it twice, but I keep getting worse...plus I've lost some desire to civ lately...

I'll go to Monarch level...as I'd just get killed at emperor, and I seem to be playing dumber lately..

I'll start on week end, as teams still in football finals series...Go HAWKS...

@ sleepless:


Congrats - I was in a very similar situation and just got hosed by the UN. I'd already completely destroyed cyrus and HC was on 50k culture in his 2 non capitols (epic speed), so I was planning to hit him next with about tech parity (marines vs infantry) when he won UN from AIs that supposedly liked me more :p (and neither of us that much). If I'd beaten him though I was in excellent shape to get to mech infantry and just splatter everyone else.

Start loc of capitol and land around it made this a hard LHC, especially with all the financial AIs...very winnable though as long as they don't cheat with hidden modifiers :(.

@ TMIT



Thanks. Unlucky with yours. Stupid UN :).

:eek: Yes...its 845 AD...NOT BC..AD...So I'm Isolated...so what

Yeah yeah Isolated, I settled in place, built 2 workers then with marble I decided on the marble wonders...I built the Great Lighthouse, Temple of Armitis, settled a 2nd city to the west, for the 30+ food gross/20 worked for my science city. I stayed at this level of cities till about 630 AD, I then decided to expand my empire


http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk264/IPEX-731BA5DD06/CIV%204%20PHOTO%20SHOTS/Lonely%20hearts%20club/28%20Brenus/IslandNorth0000.jpg


research mining, bronze working :banana: yeah bronze, fishing, sailing (lighthouse), Masonry (Great lighthouse), writing, Aesthetics, lit (great library), then Mathematics, calender, Alpha, then down optics line.

I have 2 huts unpopped as yet, and hope to pop Astronomy from one of them, once I have optics and astronomy available. If I don't I have 2 Scientists to bulb Astronomy, but I I do, I have 2 scientists to bulb Liberalism line.

I just currently spamming out the settlers to settle the cities...I now have 6 and building more cities...


http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk264/IPEX-731BA5DD06/CIV%204%20PHOTO%20SHOTS/Lonely%20hearts%20club/28%20Brenus/Islandsouth0000.jpg

It's been a while since I participated in the LHC. Hopefully I'll give it a go tonight. A few conditions though, my new graphic card must arrive first. The old one gave up on me and I have to say, it's not easy finding a good AGP card these days that works with a 350W powersupply. But I found one I think will work and hopefully it'll arrive soon and I once again can be able to play on something larger than small or tiny maps with some performance and without constant crashes ;)

And joy the wonders of internet purchasing. A brand new graphic card installed and I'm running civ faster than ever. :D

Now, I said I'd give this one a go and I did, but man, Rolo, what a start....

Monarch/Epic up to 1776AD


Well, the gods of civ (or rather, rolo) could have been nicer with this starting position. An island containing of some seafood, sugar and jungle to summarise my first impression after scouting the whole place. Not much help here when in isolation.

Though there was something positive, an event I never had before so I just had to take a picture of it.
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0071.jpg

The rest of the events where pretty boring, I don't know how many times I've lost forges, libs etc in hurricanes in this one. One of my more unlucky if not the most unlucky event games ever.

Oh well, no use whining, I did grab the two wonders I aimed for, GLH and GL. I didn't even bother thinking about any more, I've been way behind and is still somewhat behind in tech in this one.

The land of the proud celtic civ by the late 1700 century, do mind that Shaka just declared and I had to switch to Nationhood to draft a bit to repel him. My powerrating isn't worth mentioning, I didn't even bother to screenie it, I'm way down on the list. I had hoped my clever diplomacy would save me, but unfortunately Shaka didn't listen to such reasoning.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0083.jpg

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0084.jpg

And so some boring statistics
Civics:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0085.jpg

Tech situation:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0086.jpg

The cities:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0087.jpg

And VCs:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d143/Elenthrial/Civ4ScreenShot0088.jpg


To summarise. There's still a chance to save this one. Though I'm limited to spacerace, I don't think I can manage anything else. So everything will go towards production now. I'f I'm lucky, space might just be the frontier I can reach.

What have I done wrong. Well, somewhat poor cityplacements, had I kept the settler in it's original position for the capital, two pretty good cities would've been possible on the northern peninsula. Second, I delayed IW a bit and settled the low food production cities north first, they never really caught up with economy so I feel behind there already and after that I was to slow in filling up the rest of the continent.

I did manage to win the circumnav race so I was pretty early to optics, though someone had already Education at that point. All the techs I aimed at as trading techs someone else managed to grab a few turns before me and trade around, so the trading game hasn't worked that well either. Fortunately, there's a few backwards that helped fill my early tech gaps.

We'll see another day if there's an happy ending to this one ;)

Brennus? Yes please.

Up to 2280 BC, I have bronze working and AH if that would spoil anything for you.


http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d109/RichardMNixon/Civ4ScreenShot0035.jpg

Decided to move one north to grab the fish. Unfortunate that I don't get super hammers from the copper, but I like having more room for Vienne, so its not so bad.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d109/RichardMNixon/Civ4ScreenShot0036.jpg

Dotmap for future. The southern bit is not looking too good. I'm about halfway done building stonehenge in Bibracte. Current plans are to build either oracle for CoL (and a religion, which I never had in my Justinian game) or TGL.


I have very little experience with TGL; is it still worthwhile even if you don't have foreign trade routes?

I have very little experience with TGL; is it still worthwhile even if you don't have foreign trade routes?
It is.....

Think on this : a coastal city in a civ with GLH has atleast 2 "free" coins. That may look not much, but it can pay most of the maintenance of a city in that time where the city is more a drag than a asset. And that is the strength of TGL IMHO: it softens the bump in the economy when you do a new city, making less costly to settle new cities.

OFC that in LHCs it shines in that period between Astro and Corporation ;)

I guess action is a bit slow in this LHC?

Well, I've been away on buisness all week so no civving for me more than civ rev on the DS this week. But I guess this one will be abandoned by me, unless I find some time tonight, cause tomorrow I'll be down by the gamestore grabbing myself a copy of colonization, so BtS will be on a hold for a while.

Edit: I put this last bit in spoiler in hindsight, there may be a very small spoiler if you haven't even started yet...

About TGL, IMHO in this kind of map it's worth a whole lot more than the Oracle. Sure perhaps you can manage to grab both with the marble helping on Oracle in this one but I'm not too sure it's the best move. With TGL, beeline Astro, delay corps and hope that everyone else hasn't discovered banking when you reach astro.

I enjoy isolated starts as much if not more that regular maps. I just try not to play them all the time because your normal skills will decline.

Never-the-less, I am 0 for 2 on this map. I think I will try one more time.

MULLIGAN FOR BLOOD!

After getting UN screwed by pretend AI diplo nonsense, it's time for TMIT to take another look @ this map.

So far...no good. But I haven't lost yet so we'll see.

Emp/Epic

Settle in place. AH, worker.
3300 fishing in
2600 bw
2175 masonry
1950 Vienne settled 4w capitol. GP farm, definitely.
1350 Up through writing/priesthood. Building oracle. Teching IW.
1225 Oracle CoL, founded 3rd city last turn with rice/horse
1075 IW
700 Gergovia founded for 3x sugar, rice, gem
410 A GG dies in combat. Egypt is destroyed?!
395 City #5 settled for riverside/more sugar. Cottage center, just like the one before it.
200 Monarchy is in. I now have the means to get away with settling the entire continent.
125 City 6 settled on SW tip of island for fish/horse
110 BC Ouch. A 0% slider? Good thing I'm going to get some courthouses up soon!
265 AD City 7 founded on south tip of island - Just riverside coastal. A farm or two then cottages.
430 Parthenon in capitol.
580 Someone uses a GE to rush TGL :cry:. I found my 8th city for fish along the SE coast.
1210 I'm miserably backwards. Finishing up paper whilst liberalism has been finished.